Humorous musings on shaving an hour off wait for bass season opening
by Mike Brock
This week, when you wake up Sunday morning, it will be an hour earlier than it really is, but the sun doesn’t care. And I supposed that’s why we’ve been messing with clocks for the last century.
Time is our most valuable resource, of the essence. Time is a hair past a freckle, and a popular musical topic. According to Mick and Keith, it’s on our side, but Geddy Lee and the boys think that it stands still. Cher wants to turn it back, and Chicago wants to really know what time it is.
You can’t save it, no matter what jiffy pop and Jim Croce say. Nonetheless, we are tick tocking and TikToking our way through this year without slowing down. It’s almost Spring, and that means we Spring Forward. This week.
Daylight Savings Time has been pondered for hundreds of years. In the late 18th Century, American Benjamin Franklin suggested that the practice could help conserve candles. It was getting dark so early in the day, that folks were burning through more wax than they could make. The idea got snuffed, though. The next serious proposal came in 1895 when an astronomer and entomologist decided he wanted a little more daylight to look for bugs. The idea didn’t fly then, either.
The first jurisdiction to use Daylight Savings Time, in 1908, was when the Northern Ontario town of Port Arthur implemented DST on an official basis. In 1916, Germany and Austria-Hungary instituted DST on a national basis. Canada started using DST across the land during the World Wars in an effort to conserve electricity and fuel. Recently, there has been a push to cancel the flip-flopping of clocks on a bi-annual basis. Ontario, in fact, is set to cancel the clock changes as soon as our neighbours New York and Quebec, agree to do the same. British Columbia is in a similar holding pattern, and will eliminate DST when neighbouring states Oregon, California and Washington decide to do the same.
Until then, we cannot avoid the fact that we lost an hour this weekend. The question really is, though, where did it go?
Did it go somewhere that explains a lot? Did it go to those weird places where time doesn’t make sense anyway? There are so many of life’s nooks and crannies in which a Daylight Savings Hour can get lost for good. Wherever it went, I suggest that you consider it a gift. At some point this year, you’ll need an hour. Or, maybe you’ll want to skip an hour. Use this crazy little pocket of three thousand and six hundred seconds however you want.
Have you ever tried to talk to a Customer Service Representative from your phone company at a time when “there are a higher volume of calls, and the current wait time is 58 minutes”? Well, that’s nearly your missing hour right there.
Perhaps it got stuck behind a gravel truck on Highway 6 between Espanola and Little Current?
Maybe you watched an entire episode of a really bad Netflix show that embarrassed you to the point that you don’t want anyone to know about it. Well, that hour is gone, and you can now eliminate it – and the time sucking show – from your memory!
Everyone remembers the Friday before March Break. After the teacher rolls the AV cart out of the room but there’s still an hour left before the bell rings. Ding! Ding! Ding! There is your lost hour.
There is a good chance that it took up the time between getting fluoride at the dentist and when you’re allowed to eat.
Or, maybe those missing sixty minutes are lending a small hand (and a big hand) to hours hardest to pass. Like waiting for the cookies to cool out of the oven, or the night before Christmas.
Was it lost waiting in line for the Chi-Cheemaun in Torbermory?
Have you ever been stuck on the tarmac after a flight? The crushing frustration of being so close to your destination, but blocked from the final few steps. Every minute waiting for that gate to open feels like an hour. Maybe that’s where those 60 Daily Savings Minutes go.
Remember the presentation you “made” in Grade 10? The presentation you “chose” not to prepare for, and had no business making? The presentation that was only 6 minutes, but felt like an hour? Well, take that irresponsible adolescent life choice, stuff it into the 2023 DST hour and move on with your life, finally.
Over the course of the pandemic, our relationship with time has changed. Days, weeks, and now years have passed differently than they ever have before. With our new perspectives on time, and in the grand scheme of things, does a lost hour really mean that much? Or, do you value time even more now and lament the missing sixty more than ever?
Regardless of how you feel, or where you think that hour ended up, we do know one thing: we have one less hour to wait for bass season to open!
